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Media Digest 11-24-09

In this, the first edition of the Media Digest on No Kidding!, you will find news stories from November, including news about the state budget, coverage of how Washington's rising hunger rate afffects kids, a hard-hitting report about Child Protective Services, and news on the early learning front.

Tough times require tough measures. Refusing to raise taxes is part of that process. It doesn't make the task at hand any easier, but it does keep lawmakers focused on the correct side of the balance sheet: expenses.

Eliminating the Department of Corrections: $1.6 billion. Axing the Department of Natural Resources: About a half billion dollars. Getting rid of the state's health insurance program for the poor: Maybe $160 million in savings. Even if lawmakers did all of the above they'd still have to come up with roughly $400 million to balance the state budget.

Cost control is heart-rending when it impacts a child. All our state agencies are making hard choices on where to cut, in light of the economic crisis. Nowhere are they harder than at Children's Administration (CA), a division of the Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) that funds services to abused and neglected children and their families "with the goal of achieving safety, permanency and well-being for the children as quickly as possible."

The most vulnerable children in our state - children who are supposed to be protected by the state - are dying at an alarming rate. The KOMO 4 Problem Solvers spent two years filing legal requests and analyzing hundreds of documents from the state's Child Protective Services.

The recession is finding its way to the dinner table for more and more people. A new federal survey shows the number of people without a steady, reliable supply of food was at 15 percent in 2008, the highest since statistics on “food insecurity” began. And while the figures for Washington and Idaho were somewhat better, local experts say the stats just haven’t caught up with this year’s reality.

Washington state has the most regressive tax system in the country, according to a study by the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy. People earning less than $20,000 annually pay 17.3 percent of family income toward sales and excise taxes and property taxes, the report said. People making between $99,000 and $198,000 each year pay 7.6 percent toward their tax bill.

with state and local funding for education being squeezed, school administrators and classroom teachers are hoping a bill introduced by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., that would provide nearly $12 billion for literacy programs over five years will inject some much-needed cash into what most consider the cornerstone of learning. Ten percent of the funding in Murray’s bill would be aimed at programs for children from birth to age 5; 40 percent for students in kindergarten to fifth grade, and 40 percent for students in grade six through 12. The other 10 percent would be discretionary.

The federal Agriculture Department reports more Americans are going hungry because of the recession. Monday, the agency released its annual "food security" survey. The Agriculture Department survey estimates almost 15-percent of all Americans had trouble getting enough food at some point last year. That's up from 11-percent the year before.

The number of Americans who lack dependable access to adequate food shot up last year to 49 million, the largest number since the government has been keeping track, according to a government report released Monday that shows particularly steep increases in food scarcity among families with children.

When Gov. Chris Gregoire signed a sweeping education bill into law this past spring, almost no one in the room had the slightest clue she was going to veto a provision that would have added preschool for low-income and other disadvantaged kids to the state's definition of basic education.

Proposed cuts at the Washington Department of Social and Health Services would reverse Gov. Chris Gregoire’s stated goal of extending health insurance to all children in Washington by 2010. Such a measure would eliminate health insurance for thousands of children, particularly those in families of the newly poor whose parents have been laid off in the economic downturn, said Jon Gould, deputy director of the Children’s Alliance in Seattle.

About Children's Alliance

At the Children’s Alliance, we’re advocates for kids. We ensure that laws, policies and programs work for kids, and we hold our leaders accountable until they secure the resources required to make all children safe and healthy.